I might be trying to hard.  CVS 2.0 has got me excited, but perhaps it’s gotten me a little too excited, and has me pushing myself beyond comfort limits.  That’s why I’m hoping the vacation will help, just get completely out of my head.  The laptop will go along, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get anything written.  At the same time, I don’t want to leave it behind just to have inspiration hit one evening after dinner while just lounging in a hotel room.

I’ve been listening to the Drabblecast lately, enjoying its slight (or sometimes extreme) quirkiness, and it’s got me itching to try some drabbles, which might be good for me.  Get me writing and working on something with such a short distance between starting and payoff.  I’ve always been dismissive of drabbles in the past, perhaps because my only previous association with them was at various fan fiction sites a decade ago when I would actually visit fan fiction sites, usually trolling for the worst of the worst.  I suppose if I shouldn’t judge short stories by fan fic, I shouldn’t judge drabbles by fan fic drabbles.  I’ve actually been rather impressed at how people can set a tone, mood, characters, and get a resolution, all in fewer words than are likely to end up in this paragraph.  Several of my thing-a-week concepts I never really liked cause they ended up all broody and naval-gazing probably because I was trying to take a 100-word concept and turn it into a 3000-word story.

I’m also strongly considering sending Sleep to them.  I don’t know if it’ll work in audio format, but I do feel it’s a stylistic fit, and it’s not my job to reject stories for them.

If I like them, I’ll post some here.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve also discovered, through his letters and other non-fiction writing, that a certain character of mine who shall remain nameless was a racist, xenophobic luddite.  And another character of mine is a Slavic inventor.  Which I’ve also got to take care of this draft.  And a certain horrific otherworldly realm of horrors and nightmares that shall remain nameless is presented as, if anything, silly in the first draft.  I always knew that was the problem, and was kind of hoping that would be the focuse of my second draft, reworking those sections, but with the need to potentially change the whole interpersonal dynamic between two characters…this is going to be a hell of an edit.

But really, I’ve gotten almost nowhere, and for that I blame the fact that I’m running off to get married in two weeks (my god, is it only two weeks?) and just haven’t had my mind in the game.  Hopefully when I get back, I’ll be more focused, and more ready to really tackle CVS 2.0 and the big editing pass on Conqueror Worm.

Oh, finally got my Writers of the Future rejection for Belmeth, a few weeks later than usual and after the submission deadline, but I didn’t have anything else ready to go anyway.  What with focusing on Conqueror Worm, my short story career right now will probably be to just cycle Belmeth, Sleep, and Div0 to a few different markets, possibly to include Escape and Pseudopod, which someone got me hooked on (though good timing, since my favorite radio station just got taken away, screw you very much CBS Radio).  The same someone that really needs to make a blog post about her vision for CVS 2.0, since she’s one of the ones who started it, dagnabbit.

No word from Writers of the Future about Queen of Belmeth yet.  Which has me rather more optimistic than it probably should.  Last two times I entered the WotF contest, I had my rejection firmly in hand by the first week of the judging month, which I think is to encourage people to turn something around and get it in before the next deadline.  We’re now past the halfway mark in June, and I still haven’t seen that little SASE in the mail.  Which could be a good thing.  Or could be them just running a little slower this quarter.  Or me mis-addressing my SASE.  It could be any number of things other than good news.

But it could be good news.  So until I have reason to doubt that, I’ll choose to keep hope alive.

Though I have no idea what I’ll submit this month if that SASE does come back with rejection.

Contests:  End of March I entered both Writers of the Future and the Rod Serling Screenwriting contests.  Writers got Belmeth, Serling got a teleplay adaptation of Doorman that I was much happier with than at any point when it was a short story.  Writers has been encouraging lately, as I got a hand-written “Keep Entering!” from the contest head on my last rejection, as well as an email that started “Welcome back!” when they said Belmeth had arrived.  So while I’m not doing well enough to be an honorable mention, I’m at least doing well enough to maintain a little name recognition.

Shame it’s blind judging.  Oh well.

Arkham:  Been working on the new pilot with Blythe, and we’re both liking it better than the original pilot.  Lots of monsters and blood and ooze and body parts and screaming.  Which I think will bring more people into the show than kidnapping and some stuff that, if I’m to be honest with myself, was largely ripped off from X-Files black oil.

Capsule:  Been world-building, and am going to present what I have of it tonight at CVS for comments and to see what kind of questions people have about it.

Hench:  New project, don’t know where it’ll go yet.

Conqueror Worm:  Just as soon as this draft of Arkham is done.  Probably mid-May.

No name on the work except the cover.  Check.

Page numbers.  Check.

Manuscript format.  Check

SASE.  Check.

Printing has completed.  Now it’s just working up the nerves to head down to the car and get me to the Post Office.  After this one heads off, the next project will probably be a big edit of The Dorman, a story that I think has a lot of good potential, but also needs a really strong editing pass.

…to prepare submit each of the seven stories from my previous entry for publication (at least one in the remains of 2008).

…to complete a full editing pass of Conqueror Worm and send out query letters within two months of this completion (not necessarily in 2009, but no later than the end of February 2010).

…to outline and draft an entire 42 minute script for an episode of Arkham on my own.

…to submit Arkham to a spec pilot contest, like People’s Pilot or Slamdance’s Teleplay Contest.  Glad to see you’re back, Slamdance!

And, if there’s time among all of that, there’s a few other projects I’d like to do, but won’t call Resoultions, as I suspect the above will take up plenty of my time but I hope…

…to finally update the look of this blog from template to my own little corner of the interwebs.

…to plot out an original feature-length screenplay for contest submission.

…to plot out a spec script for contest submissions.

…to finish worldbuilding of Capsule in hopes of approaching next Nanowrimo much more prepared to actually write it.

There we go.  Keeping myself honest yet again.

For now, a Nanowrimo post mortem.  I backed out.  Look, here’s the thing.  I was working on the thing-a-week project, which was keeping me busy, keeping me away from other projects.  And the very first thing I did was start a new project which would further keep me away from other project.  I like the plot, but it requires a lot of world building, and it deserves a lot more thought that Nanowrimo was going to let me put into it.

So here’s where I am.  I’ve got some short stories from either my aborted thing-a-week or earlier that I think can be worked into shape to submit to publications.  The list, to keep myself honest:

• Sleep (previous purchased, not published)
• Div0
• The Rustler of Drybone Gulch
• Carbon Offsets
• The Doorman
• The Queen of Belmeth
• Looking Over

Quite a list.  I’m hoping to go back into something like thing-a-week, but editing these stories over the next two months with an eye of sending them out.  Plan one is to submit something to the next Writers of the Future contest while I’m still eligible.   Then, it’ll probably be Queen of Belmeth sent off to Weird Tales.

In my novels, I need to give Conqueror Worm a big editing pass.  That’ll hopefully start no later than March, but if I can get started in February, that’ll rock.

The television pilot project, Arkham, still remains firmly on a front burner, gotta get back to work on that ASAP.

I’d like to write a spec script.

I’d like to do a massive rewrite of Halley’s Tail.

Dear lord that’s a lot of stuff.

Well, that really just summed it up right there.  My thing-a-week project has come to a crashing failure around me, but really…I have to say I’m okay with that.  For a couple reasons.

Reason the first.  The short stories had moved from fun to grind.  Writing should not be a grind, it should never be a grind.  The point of writing is to have fun with it, but I wasn’t having fun anymore with the stories.  Every week I was dreading them more and more.  And that’s just not the way to get anywhere.

Reason the second.  I was leaving stuff behind.  I’ve got several other long term projects in the work, and I figured I’d be able to work on them in the background while also working on the stories.  No dice.  Haven’t been able to touch the novels I’d like to be editing, haven’t been able to help on the TV pilot I’ve been working on with my girlfriend, haven’t been able to work on my own planned spec script.  And, most importantly, haven’t been able to work on my blog.  Hi there!

Reason the third.  I still feel like I’ve learned something through all of this.  I experimented with some different voices, structures, and genres.  Some of them I was comfortable with.  Some I was uncomfortable with.  It’s good to know where I excel, where I’m weak, and frankly to focus on the former.  I know, I know, I’m supposed to grow as a writer, but I think I can do that just fine while acknowledging that my strength is not thrillers and avoiding getting into a big one of those.

So.  Here I am, at the far end of the project, but not as far of a far end as I’d hoped.  I’m staring down Nanowrimo now, trying to figure out just exactly what it is I want to do for it.  I’m also starting to figure out which of two novels to edit first, and how to get started on the spec script I mentioned.  The biggest hurdle is to tell myself “THIS ISN’T FAN FICTION” enough that I finally start believing it.  Because…well, it is fiction, and it is written by a fan, but since I’m going to be writing it in teleplay format and submitting it to contests, that makes it different.

I’m also going to get back to this blog, I swear, updating it more with my projects, my progress, and my thoughts about writing.  So let’s start with the upcoming projects:

• Editing novel: Conqueror Worm
• Editing novel: End of the Line
• Nanowrimo (?)
• Preparing short story for submission: !Div0
• Preparing short story for submission: The Doorman
• Preparing short story for submission: The Queen of Belmeth
• Spec Script: The Office: The Big Debut

There we go.  All put down so that people can hold me to them.  I’ll talk about what each one actually is as I work them.  Current project: The Queen of Belmeth.

I’m not saying better.  Just differently.

Also, I’ve now hit the point where I’ve made my way through five weeks of this process, and I’m now into month number two.  This is the point where I wondered if I would start breaking.  My longest sustained writing processes in the past have always been Nanowrimo, one month of hard work at the end of which I find myself burned out.  This is different.  Now granted, I’ve written about one quarter of the words that I would have in Nanowrimo, but each week I’m starting over in a way Nanowrimo doesn’t require.  New styles of writing, new characters, a new plot.  I figured it would balance itself out.  But I still feel good, and I’m excited about getting into month two.

This week is going to be a tough one, though.  I’m leaving tomorrow for Vegas, driving to San Fran, and won’t be getting back until next Friday, so that’s entire writing week spent on the road.  I’ve got a concept in mind that will be more a series of vignettes than a single story, something I can squeeze in as I can go.

Wish me luck.

I’ve also added a story concept to the list, which means a net loss of zero this week.  Which is the kind of thing I hope to be able to keep up.

The title of the first story:  Carbon Offsets.